2 Tribe and its Problematic Nature

Kanato Chophy

Introduction

The concept of tribe has traversed a long academic and intellectual history in anthropology. In fact, many scholars consider the term ‘tribe’ synonymous with the development of anthropology as a specialized discipline, which focused primarily on the study of ‘primitive’, remote, isolated and small-scale societies. The word tribe in medieval Europe loosely referred to a group of people maintaining close contact with each other and claiming descent from a common ancestor; nevertheless, it also gained notoriety for its assumed barbarous condition, amorphous and apolitical state as opposed to the centralized authority and city-state political organization inherited as part of the Roman Empire. In fact, the term tribe is also closely associated with what is known as the ‘Dark Age’ in Europe—a period said to be populated by hordes of kin based warring groups steeped in chaos and barbarity until rescued by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment in Europe, deemed as the age of Reason. The inheritance of the intellectual concept of tribe by the early Victorian thinkers propping the conceptual development in anthropology followed the same analogy, where European society was seen as the pinnacle of civilisation and technological advancement as opposed to the primitive, barbarous and technologically inferior societies in Africa and the Orient. In crux, the development of the concept was shrouded in value judgment and measure of civilisational superiority invented and nurtured by the western society.

In Europe, the region to which anthropology owes its beginning, it was mostly the lawyer-philosophers who systematized the concept with the aim to delineate the types of societies in relation to the emergence of different laws, customs and political institutions underpinning human societies and guiding the functionality of human marriage, family, kinship and other institutions. Thus it was especially in the writings of people like Henry S. Maine, J.F. McLennan, J.S. Mills, and Johannes Bachofen, etc., who gave shape to the concept to classify the progression of human societies and cultures on an evolutionary scale; and later in the works of early anthropologists like E.B. Tylor, L.H. Morgan, Robert Lowie, Malinowski, and Evans-Pritchard the term became a common currency in anthropology influencing the development of anthropological theories and ethnographic method. Consistent with this anthropologists like Elman Service and Marshal Sahlins classified human societies on the basis of political organisations such as bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states— here the tribes represented by a political formation based primarily on kinship bonds and segmentary lineage system. However, the term ‘tribe’ became increasingly complex as scholars across interdisciplinary boundaries began to attribute both specific and general characteristics to the concept. As such varying criteria like geographical isolation, marginality, economy and livelihood, language, religion, political organisation, territorial integrity, and distance from civilization began to be identified and to accentuate the understanding of the term tribe.

The Theoretical and Conceptual Development

The conceptual development of the word tribe is mired in controversy because of the close association between anthropology and European colonialism. It is evident that the concept emerged in the context of Africa, Australasia and North America, but later towards the second half of the 18th century the concept became popular in the Indian context to identify and classify Indian populations on the basis of social formation by the colonial government. Given the diversity within the population groups regarded as tribes, different terms were used such as aborigines, natives, first nations, primitive peoples, and indigenous peoples, etc. All these terms were used interchangeably to denote groups of people deemed different from the mainstream societies. Nevertheless, there was no unanimity among the scholars as to the exact definition of tribe, thereby churning out a great deal of definitions; hitherto, there is no working definition except some shared commonalities, although those characteristics which were earlier identified as attributes of tribal communities are fast changing and have become increasingly problematic in the contemporary situation.

The ethnographic studies conducted by anthropologist across the globe exacerbated the conceptual ambiguity since what scholars like Morgan, Sahlins and Godelier saw as organized society with well demarcated social, cultural and as endogamous unit was challenged by later scholars who witnessed fluidity and permeability in the afore mentioned boundaries within the societies identified as tribes especially in the context of South Asia. In a radical departure from the tacit definition of tribes, Morton Fried posited tribe as a kind of epiphenomena taking its form and identity from other social formations—which he opined would take a different form and identity when the external source from which the group derive its identity begin to shift its boundary and change over time. Though Morton Fried’s thesis can be supported by ethnographic data from Africa, North America and the Indian sub-continent; however, what Maurice Godelier posited tribe as both ‘a type of society and a stage of evolution’ could be equally substantiated by anthropologists conducting fieldwork in the sub-Saharan region, Australia and the Pacific islands, although guided by differing theoretical perspectives. For instance, in the study conducted by Elisabeth Colson, she observed that the identity of Makah Indians as a tribe owed its existence not to the assumed distant past but to a more recent period, a process emerging out of the administrative policy of the United States government primarily in the works of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. But also among the Australian Aborigines, African tribes and Native Americans, early social scientists like Durkheim, Mauss, Tylor and Robertson Smith found a pristine and isolated societal and cultural stage, which provided scope not only for theoretical developments but also notable characteristic features to identify and characterize what was known as primitive and tribal societies. Interestingly, what these scholars theorized, such as ‘primitive classification’, ‘divisio n of labour’, ‘animism’, ‘totemism’, and ‘segmentary system’ became point of reference for classification and identification of tribes. As such concepts like animism and totemism still finds popular usage and provides theoretical underpinning to the conceptual understanding of tribal communities. Thus for instance, in the Indian census operation of 1901, tribes were identified as those who practiced ‘animism’, a conceptual framework that would change in the succeeding census operations.

In retrospect, the rise of anthropological theories on religion and political organisation influenced the contours of conceptual developments of tribe amongst the theorizing of other social institutions. Consistent with this, it was Durkheim’s theorizing on the primitive and non-state societies based on evolutionary principle that had paramount influence on the conceptual development of tribe. Emile Durkheim’s conceptual developments such as categories of thought, division of labour, primitive classification and segmentary system was used extensively towards the latter part of the 19th century; however, it was scholars in the Commonwealth who resuscitated Durkheim’s original work on the ‘polysegmental society’ to lend conceptual framework to the understanding of tribe. The two notable works that popularized segmentary system was Evans-Pritchard’s The Nuer and Meyer Fortes and Evans-Pritchard’s edited volume African Political Systems. As observed it was in the ethnographic works of Evans-Pritchard and Paul Bohannan on segmentary lineage system on the Nuer and the Tivin Africa that caught the imagination of researchers who began to replicate his structural model in communities around the globe to develop a uniform conceptual understanding of tribe. The definition of tribe as a segmentary system found takers among anthropologists on both sides of the Atlantic. Thus it was the American anthropologist, Marshal Sahlins, whose definition of tribes as a ‘segmental organisation’ gained prominence in an attempt to universalize the definitio n of tribes across cultural and geographical boundaries.

The definition of tribe as segmentary system was understood as a societal system composed of equivalent segments, or parts each similar to the other in structure and function based primarily on kinship rules—both imagined and real— stretching further into larger genealogical groups but maintaining structural parallelism, as best exemplified by Evans-Pritchard work on the Nuer, where a local segment stretched further into hierarchy of lineages up to the binary opposition of the Nuer and Dinka tribal identity. The tribe as segmentary system was not without criticism, as the segmentary principle was not consistent everywhere; and scholars began to critique tribes as an evolutionary stage, which was significantly diverse and too amorphous to be contained within a fixed conceptual framework.

In the Indian subcontinent, the problem is more observed due to the pervasive reality of what the Indian anthropologists call as ‘tribes in transition’ or the tribe-caste continuum. According to N.K. Bose categorization of ‘jana and jati’ i.e., tribe and caste—the jana had been interacting with the jati in significant ways since time immemorial. Bose argued that Indian tribes were never isolated but were part and parcel of Indian civilization; and therefore, it is important to understand the process of what he calls as tribe-caste continuum.

Unlike in other parts of the world where the Anglo-American anthropologists drew their ethnographic data to build a case for evolutionary perspective of tribes or as a ‘stage of evolution’, the same could not be applied in the Indian context comprising the Old World, where substantial ethnographic data and ancient Sanskritic texts garnered a case of centuries of coexistence between tribes and civilization. In the Anglo-American definition and characterisation of tribes, the distance, if not isolation of tribes from civilization featured prominently in the theoretical and conceptual developments. However, the case of Indian tribes presented a peculiar situation that challenged the popular conception of tribes. Thus for instance, in recent times communities like the Gujjars in Rajasthan and the Mahato in Chotanagpur are reasserting their identity to be counted as tribes, a contentious identity politics in India substantiating Morton Fried’s thesis of tribes as an epiphenomena; however, on the other hand, ‘primitive’ tribal groups like the Andaman Islander tribes can fit into what anthropologists have identified as a ‘stage of evolution’.

André Béteille in his important contribution noted that tribes and civilization have coexisted together, and the demarcating identity of tribe in India has been that of ‘remaining outside the state or civilization, whether by choice or necessity’ rather than occupying a definite stage of evolution in the progression from simple to complex social formations. Béteille’s contention was to challenge the West’s conceptual development of tribe, but as he further observes, the development of the concept of tribe in India was to identify rather than define; and the administrative and political pursuits have supplanted the theoretical and methodological considerations.

Definition

Anthropologists have defined tribe in varied ways, but if we survey the literature on tribes, some consensus can be arrived at. Broadly speaking, tribes are conceptualized in anthropological literature as isolated or relatively isolated communities having cultural autonomy with a demarcated territory, having a specific dialect, showing relatively simple mode of production using crude and simple technology, characterized by subsistence economy and absence of monetized economy; it is a group with its own traditional religion, deities, semiotic system, cosmology, rituals, ceremonies and beliefs; characterized by political sovereignty and self-determination, having control over resources at the level of individual and the community; sharing the same culture, ethnic identity, history, future aspirations, and where the members have a sense of belongingness to a common stock which Ralph Linton called as ‘Esprit-de-Corps’. However, if we understand tribes by all these features, they point toward a particular social stereotype of tribal communities, because in reality the communities enlisted as tribes do not possess all the characteristics.

These characteristic features conjures an image of a small group of people isolated in terms of culture, language and having a different lifestyle in which religion and economy play an important role along with politics but they do not override the cultural values. It is characterized by a communitarian lifestyle with the community wellbeing taking precedence over individual aspirations, a lifestyle in which the society develops on the availability of local resources. Also a collective living in which they worship certain gods and goddesses, not comparable with the gods and goddesses of great religions, and they have their own religious as well as political leadership. What is being hinted in this definition is a whole community, which is not affected by so called civilization and mainstream culture. This way of understanding tribes have created many conceptual problems and ambiguity in the definition of tribes.

Problems of definition with special reference to India

The term tribe is definitely an exterior category, which fails to reflect the indigenous reality. The term tribe is not an indigenous category and lack consensus. Many anthropologists would have reservation using the term tribe; instead, some have used the terms adivasi, adimjati, anusuchitjanjati, vanvasi, and so on. The term tribe is not a universally valid category since the similar groups of people whom we call tribes in India are called Native Indians in North America, minorities in China, Aborigines in Australia, and indigenous peoples in South America, etc. Even within a particular country, there are different stakeholders who are interested in the study and administration of tribal affairs: there are administrators, census enumerators, planners and developmental specialists, members of civil societies, and academics, etc. Even among the academics there are anthropologists, historians, political scientists, sociologists, and social workers, etc., and there is no consensus as to what should be called a tribal society. The problem is even more acute in the case of India due to two fundamental reasons.

1. The multiplicity of cultures, socio-economic formations, and language, etc., are so diversified that hunter-gatherers, cultivators, pastoralists, artisans, and industrial labourers are all clubbed together under the category of tribe. The social categories are diversely formed on the principles of matriliny, moiety system, to caste like formation, and tribes are known for cultural richness and diversity. There is tremendous diversity and one word cannot do justice to all these types of social formations.
2. The other problem is how the question of tribe has been handled by various stakeholders, and more importantly by the government agencies. If we look into the categories used by census enumerators, we find that in a relatively short span of time between 1901-1951 different terms were used for designating tribal communities. In 1901, they were named as people who practiced animism, in 1921 as hills and forest tribes, and in 1951 as Scheduled Tribes, etc. Before 1901, they were named as aboriginals, primitive peoples and outcaste, etc. Thus these census exercises have added more confusion rather than ameliorating the concept.

If we look into the empirical situation, the problem of defining a tribe gets compounded. For instance, let us take the criteria of isolation or semi-isolation; studies from North East India suggest that the Naga tribes during the colonial and pre-colonial rule enjoyed a different kind of isolation. The Naga villages were located on hill tops and were fortified having boundary walls and reinforced with wooden palisades, sentry outpost and khel gates to protect the community from invasion and headhunting raids; and as such it helped the colonial administrator-ethnographers to conceive the Naga as an isolated community. However, Haimendorf reported that the Nagas as early as the 18th century would organize themselves and come to the neighboring plains to take away plunder from the markets, since their relationship with their neighbours was marked with hostility. In the case of Andaman Islands among the tribes like the Sentinelese, Jarawa, and Shompen, etc., who is known for their aversion toward outside contact, the colonial government had been sending unmanned boats of bananas, blankets, tents and other items; and they have been using these commodities, and as such the argument of absolute cultural isolation is a misnomer. Therefore, the criteria of isolation cannot be regarded to judge the community as a tribe or non-tribe. On the contrary, in the Nilgiri hills of South India,the Toda, Kota, Kurumba and Badaga best exemplify the case of economic interdependence and cultural contact between tribe and caste. The Toda are pastoralists, the Kota are medicine men, the Kurumba are artisans, and the Badaga are agriculturalists; and importantly, they are not in hostile relationship with their neighbours. There exists a kind of exchange mechanism among the four communities characterized by bartering system assuming a form of jajmani system; and jajmani system is found among caste communities. These four tribal communities are not isolated but they live together in a system of economic interdependence. The very notion of isolation among Indian tribes is a misnomer, since the tribal situation can range from punctuated hostility (like among the Naga and Sentinelese) to a system of harmonic economic dependence not only within the tribal communities but also with the neighbouring caste communities.

If we look into the tribal economy, the argument of subsistence economy is not always true; many a times tribal economy is marked by the production of surplus, and they enter the market economy especially among the rich and the elite. In the India context, tribes like the Totos and Bhotia were traders supplying hand woven items like shawls to their long time clients. Among the West African tribes, cowrie shells were regarded as a medium of exchange. The Tiv of Nigeria used iron rods as medium of exchange, while among the Ashanti, golden weights and blankets were used. In this context, anthropologists like Dalton and Bohannan have used the term ‘primitive money’ for such kind of exchange. Thus owing to diverse economic livelihood among the communities deemed as tribes, the parochial definition of subsistence economy fails to capture the prevailing social reality.

On the aspect of political life, the tribal societies show diverse political systems and institutions. If we look into the tribal governance, traditionally many tribes may have been autonomous, but after the

formation of the Indian state, the collective resources were brought under the state, and over a period of time the people who owned them became daily wage labourers in their own land; and therefore, it is important to understand the emerging political domination by the exterior state to an extent to which they get pauperized. Tribes as sovereign communities are no longer applicable; they have to pay tax, abide by common law of the land, and the problem of governance is creating more vexing issues about tribal polity. The rise of modern day Naxalite movement in Central India and the separatist movements in North East India are all examples of evolving tribal polity and governance, and therefore it would be erroneous to argue that tribal people have their own autonomy.

‘Tribe’: the Future of the Concept

The term tribe has fallen into disrepute in the contemporary anthropological thought; nevertheless, this does not imply that the concept has been completely discarded for lack of unanimity and coherence. The term is considered pejorative for its negative connotation grading human societies on an evolutionary scale; moreover, scholars in the postcolonial context associate the concept with European colonialism and imperialism perpetuating the colonial condition and consciousness. Be that as it may, to denounce the social formation albeit paradoxically identified as tribe in India, and by host of other names in various parts of the globe would be to commit an intellectual fallacy. The concept tribe may be seen as a social construction, but nevertheless it also represents a type of social formation maintained by the duality of the self and other, where the resilience of human adaptation, creativity and environmental factor take the form of ethnic and cultural diversity.

At least in the Indian context, the concept is here to stay, and will occupy an important space in the Indian anthropological scene for decades in the 21st century. This does not imply that Indian social scientists are averse to change nor are they oblivious to postmodern semantics and the conundrum of multiple identities vexing anthropological discourse. The concept of tribe has ensconced itself in the Indian context as it has become conflated with the government’s affirmative action and constitutional safeguard for marginalised communities of the Indian state. In fact, the term Scheduled Tribe has constitutional legitimacy and sanction consequently influencing the academic discourse as well as policy making involving various stakeholders interested in the study of tribes. The social category called as tribe and also interchangeably by other terms like adivasi, indigenous peoples, andjanjati, etc., will continue to both enhance and perplex Indian anthropology.

References and Selected Readings

• Béteille, André (1989) ‘The Idea of Indigenous People.’ In Current Anthropology 39 (2): 187-192.
• Ghurye, G.S. (1963) The Scheduled Tribes. Bombay: Popular Prakashan.
• Godelier, Maurice (1977) Perspective in Marxist Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Fried, M.H. (1975) The Notion of Tribe, Menlo Park, CA: Cummings Publishing.
• Kuper, Adam (2005) The Reinvention of a Primitive Society: Transformations of a Myth, 2nd edn. New York: Routledge.
• Marshal, D. Sahlins (1961) ‘The Segmentary Lineage: An Organisation of Predatory Expansion.’ In American Anthropologist 63 (2): 322-345.
• Singh, K.S. (ed.) (1972) Tribal Situation in India. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.